Read Spider Shepherd 11 - White Lies for Free Online Page B

not just saying that.’
    ‘I’m on that eat for five days, fast for two days,’ she said. She picked up her fork. ‘Not a real fast, I just have to cut back to five hundred calories on a fast day.’ She nodded at her plate. ‘This is about it, I’m afraid.’
    Shepherd tucked into his breakfast while Button took small mouthfuls and chewed slowly.
    ‘That turned out to be one of your longer cases, didn’t it,’ she asked. It was a statement rather than a question.
    ‘Four months, on and off,’ he said, as he buttered a slice of toast. ‘It wasn’t easy getting them to approach me. Softly, softly. I had to get close to Rainey and then wait for him to introduce me to Coatsworth. It took time. And a lot of trips on the boat.’ He sipped his coffee. ‘You know, I was on a similar case seven years ago, when I was with the cops. That’s when I learned to drive a rib.’
    Button nodded. ‘That’s what made you the perfect choice for this job.’
    ‘Yeah, but here’s the thing. Seven years ago they were using ribs to dash across the Channel. My case back then was counterfeit currency, but it was clear the same boats were being used for drugs and for people. Seven years later nothing has changed.’
    ‘Your point being?’
    Shepherd smiled thinly. ‘I’m not sure there is a point,’ he said. ‘In fact the whole exercise seems pointless. Anyone can go out and buy a rib and a GPS and set themselves up as a smuggler.’
    ‘And we stop them. That’s how it works.’
    ‘But we’re not stopping them, are we? We stopped Coatsworth, sure. But how many others are there?’
    ‘You’re saying that because so many people are breaking the law we should just stop what we’re doing? That’s like saying we should let everyone drive at ninety miles an hour because so many people break the speed limit.’
    Shepherd shook his head. ‘I just think there has to be a more efficient way of handling it. Make ribs harder to buy, for instance. Or have them all chipped so that they can be tracked by satellite. That way if one keeps running back and forth to the Continent, someone can knock on the captain’s door and ask him what he’s up to. How hard would that be?’
    ‘Fitting a tracker would be easy enough, but so would disabling it. But it’s a good idea, I’ll raise it with the relevant authorities.’
    ‘Not Border Farce, please.’
    Button chuckled. ‘You really must stop calling them that. I’ll end up picking up the habit and that really won’t do.’
    ‘Charlie, with the best will in the world, their incompetence nearly got me killed last night.’
    ‘You got a bump on the head.’
    ‘No, I had a Magnalite torch smashed down on my skull. If he’d hit my temple, I could have died. And that whole business with the kid wouldn’t have happened if there had been armed cops to take care of the situation.’
    ‘As I said last night, there had been no mentions of a gun so the Border Force commander didn’t think an armed response was necessary.’
    ‘The commander would be that woman who was on the beach, right? She seemed to be running things. Though by the size of her, I doubt she does much actual running.’
    ‘Spider! Please. That’s uncalled for.’
    ‘OK, I take it back. But you can understand why she’s not my flavour of the month just now.’ He gestured with his knife at the dressing on his head.
    ‘Anyway, she wasn’t the commander. The commander wasn’t on the scene, but she was his number two. She’s very experienced, Spider, she was ten years with Revenue and Customs investigations.’
    ‘She let the situation get out of control, way out of control.’ He buttered another piece of toast.
    ‘And you rescued it,’ said Button. ‘She knows that, and I will take it up with her commander. But really, all’s well that ends well.’ She refilled her cup from a white pot. ‘Now, let’s look ahead. I’ve nothing pressing for you and you put in more than enough hours on the Coatsworth case,